culture

culture

Roseilyn Guzman, a master’s student studying higher education with an emphasis in student affairs emphasis, sought out invaluable experiences with Latino and Lantina cultural centers this summer during her student affairs and research internships at the University of Pennsylvania.

Most people misunderstand what corporate culture is and how to change it if it's not working well, says William Rothwell, professor of workforce education and development at Penn State. The culture of an organization is not just something that can be announced with a slogan, but rather the end result of actions taken, he explains. To change corporate culture, then, requires giving an organization a new experience.

Robin Bower, associate professor of Spanish and comparative literature and culture at Penn State Beaver, is one of only two University faculty members to receive the 2012 Milton S. Eisenhower Award for Distinguished Teaching. The award recognizes excellence in teaching and student support among tenured faculty who have been employed full time for at least five years with undergraduate teaching as a major portion of their duties. Bower received the Penn State Beaver Bayer Corporation Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Penn State Beaver Advisory Board Michael Baker Corporation Faculty Excellence in Research Award. She is the campus Honors Program coordinator and chairs the Penn State Beaver Retention Task Force and its subcommittee on pedagogy. Bower can be contacted at rmb29@psu.edu or 724-773-3886.

Penn State York will celebrate its 14th annual Unity Day on Thursday, April 12, and a variety of programs are planned from April 9-12, when students, faculty, staff, and members of the York community are invited to celebrate diversity. Events will take place in and around the Joe and Rosie Ruhl Student Community Center from noon-1:00 p.m. each day and are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted. Please complete the online form if you are interested in being involved in Unity Day.

Monday through Thursday, a variety of events are scheduled to take place, providing an opportunity to learn something new each day. Monday's program highlights a presentation on France given by students who visited that country during spring break 2012; Tuesday features Bollywood dance lessons provided by Penn State York's Asian Culture Club, and Wednesday explores Portugal and Spain through the eyes of Penn State York students who visited those countries as part of campus international trips.

Penn State York's Asian Culture Club (ACC) will share information about the Muslim festival Eid-al-Adha at noon on Friday, Nov. 4, in the Community Room of the Joe and Rosie Ruhl Student Community Center. The event is open to the campus community. Students will discuss the religious significance of the festival and share their personal experiences celebrating Eid. The presentation will be followed by a food tasting of dishes from South Asia.

While misunderstandings may exist regarding cultural norms about
formality and personal space, Americans and French share a deep
commitment to democratic values and individual liberties, said Willa
Z. Silverman, professor of French and Jewish studies. "To begin with," said Silverman, "both the United States and France are diverse and pluralistic societies, so the notion of 'national character' is something of a mythical construction. This being said, I will offer that the French, whose society had rigid hierarchies for many centuries, place a greater, if subtle, emphasis on boundaries and distance -- between public and private space; between and among social and generational groups; and between strangers and intimates."

While misunderstandings may exist regarding cultural norms about
formality and personal space, Americans and French share a deep
commitment to democratic values and individual liberties, says Willa
Z. Silverman, professor of French and Jewish Studies.

Student Activities is sponsoring an Earth Day and Unity Day celebration from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, at the campus in Center Valley, Pa. Tie-dying will take place at 10 a.m., and a selection of foods from around the globe will be offered outdoors (weather permitting) at noon. The day will conclude with the planting of trees and flowers on the campus grounds through 2 p.m. Penn State Lehigh Valley students, faculty and staff are welcome to participate.

Kylee Weaver, a senior majoring in applied psychology at Penn State Beaver, is a co-recipient of the Penn State 2011 Jackson Lethbridge Tolerance Award. Weaver is from Grove City, Pa. The award recognizes a junior, senior or graduate student for outstanding efforts to enhance the understanding of diverse cultures and create a community where all individuals are accepted and valued equally. It is named for its benefactor, a Penn State alumnus. Weaver established the Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, and Transgender Club at Beaver campus. As club president, she has arranged for speakers, organized events for student participation, and managed the oversight of many club-sponsored events. Weaver can be contacted at kaw5281@psu.edu.

"Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!" Each year on October 31st, children dressed in fanciful costumes go door-to-door demanding candy from their neighbors. Meanwhile, older folks tour haunted houses staged with phony bats, spiders, and goblins, and party until dawn.

Halloween is a much-loved tradition in the United States—and big business, to the tune of $5-7 billion annually. Yet most of us know little about the origins of this celebration of spookiness.

Materialism permeates American culture. While our economy thrives upon it, our songwriters have long warned against it: In the sixties, the Beatles sang "I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love" and today, Kanye West raps that "the prettiest people do the ugliest things for the road to riches and diamond rings."

The caption for the photograph used on the cover of this magazine in November 1980 reads: "A village potter on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan."

It had always been one of our best covers, the tense concentration of the artisan balanced by the elegant lines and arcs of the photograph's composition. The image took on a new meaning after September 11, however, as I struggled to accommodate this peaceful vision of village life with September's atrocious acts and the ensuing war in Afghanistan.

What exactly are they selling anyway?, complains the jaundiced TV viewer. Who do they think buys this stuff? asks the browser at the magazine rack.

Read Undressing the Ad and you'll answer those questions. "Advertisements sanctify, signify, mythologize, and fantasize," editor Katherine Toland Frith writes. "They uphold some of the existing economic and political structures and subvert others. Not only does advertising shape American culture; it shapes Americans' images of themselves."

"How do you get a poem to make sense to a person who is only going to school so that he or she can go to basketball practice after school?"

This is a question Jasmone Brockington, an English education major, asks herself. She is trying to find ways to make the standard highschool curriculum more interesting and accessible to African-American students. She presents her ideas in a thesis: "Paving the Way: A Cultural Program to Strengthen the Self Confidence of African-American Students."